


with only strangers watching

by wtfoctagon



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/F, spoilers up to 5.3 depending on the chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:22:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26264911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtfoctagon/pseuds/wtfoctagon
Summary: Collection of my prompt writeups for #FFxivWrite month! Featuring me and my friends' WoLs, as well as the ladies of canon.Title from Antebellum by Vienna Teng
Relationships: Sadu Dotharl/Warrior of Light
Comments: 5
Kudos: 8





	with only strangers watching

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The musings of a Dotharli WoL after the 5.3 Azem reveal
> 
> some context: Tseren is technically a female Xaela, but gender-wise is... wibbly, having been born male first and then bodyswapped a few times (long story) as well as being Dotharli and giving 0 shits about gender. I decided on second person because I didn't want to think too hard about what personal pronouns he'd use (everyone uses 'he' for him out of habit). 
> 
> He was a sickly kid who looked like he was going to die every winter, but survived to become the tribe's best healer despite all that before leaving for Eorzea shortly after the Calamity. 
> 
> He made up with Sadu again during the events of the SB patches, so they have a... complicated, if loving friendship now.

> Crux.
> 
> 1: a puzzling or difficult problem : an unsolved question
> 
> 2: an essential point requiring resolution or resolving an outcome
> 
> 3: a main or central feature (as of an argument)
> 
> From the Latin _Crux:_ cross, stake, instrument of torture.

* * *

An Allagan artifact.

You stare at the pillars you held sacred for most of your life— the pattern of their luminescent runes etched into your memory from long days of your childhood contemplating the end of your lives— and try to find the wonder welling within you once again. 

Once upon a time, you believed yourself a child of Nhaama. You dreamt of her eternal embrace as your lungs threatened to fail you every winter, as your tribe looked upon you with worry and pity. Even during the dark days alone in Ul’dah, you held fast to your faith— she loved you, you were so sure. She intended a greater, kinder destiny for you— and at duty’s end, she would deliver you home to the arms of your beloved. 

Sitting in the House of the Crooked Coin now, knowing the shard of Nhaama is no more than a structure made to regulate aether, constructed by cruel men who cared for nothing but power and knowledge, you… 

You wonder what Emet-Selch would have said, seeing you now. 

(In your mind’s eye, he ridicules you— the idea of such blind worship would have seemed so primitive to him. He piles on the jabs about how broken mankind is now with his signature flair, rolling his eyes and smirking as he does. And still, and still, he has the kindness to ask if you would like to hear the truth behind the stories that shaped your life. 

Hades has always had a soft spot for you, after all.)

You sigh as you cross your legs underneath yourself, turning Azem’s crystal over and over in your hands like the heart of a chronometer. The so-called truth of the universe breaks your heart less than you thought it would. After all, everything is a story, is it not? Everything is a story, because stories are what last beyond legacies and empires and even the sundering of worlds. 

Everything is a story, and that’s why you sit here— the half-shard of Azem, a child of the Azim Steppe— wondering who had been the Nhaama behind the legends.

There very well may not have been anyone. Stories work in duality and opposites, and for men to come up with a Dusk to match the half-remembered echo of a Dawn isn’t so implausible— and still, you wonder. What had Azem done here, to be remembered and etched into the land itself? Who had Nhaama been, to have her story so entwined to Azem’s?

(Would they have found each other, in those early days after the Sundering? Where is she now, if she’s out there?)

You shake the thoughts from your head and laugh. Careful, now, you sound like an Oronir— though, perhaps, there is some truth to their stories as well. There’s a certain vindictive pleasure in knowing you are the true heir to their precious Dawn Father, but you put it aside for now.

“Tseren…”

Sadu’s voice is so brittle, so apprehensive, so much of everything she never has been, you almost don’t recognize it. And in a moment, you remember yourself— sitting here, at the yawning abyss that promises eternal freedom from the mortal coil, to never be reborn again.

“You know me better than that,” you say, not looking back at her. You do not hear her move.

“Do I?”

And the question is heavy with the long years since the day you left the steppe. You almost laugh. Passing strange, isn’t it? You’ve loved each other for nigh on five hundred years— bonded together through the passing of your lives— and yet, it’s the mere five years you’ve been apart that weighs on you both like sheets of frozen rain. 

“Yes, you do.” Your voice is clear. “Always.”

There’s a pause before you hear her sandals scraping against the ancient stone— and in a moment, she’s sitting next to you, eyes turned to the pillars as yours turn to her.

(She’s beautiful. She always has been. You called her the incarnation of dusk’s beauty, once, in your clumsy adolescent courtship— she punched you square in the face to make sure you didn’t see her blushing. 

It’s still one of your favourite memories.)

“I always knew you would leave.” 

You blink, furrowing your brow, even as she gazes upon the glowing runes. “What?”

“You leaving the tribe, little fool,” she clicks her tongue, as impatient as ever. “Altajin always warned me it would happen.”

Altajin, the Khan before Sadu— the one who had recognized you and Sadu when you were born, scant months apart. He had been the only person aside from Sadu to believe that you would survive to see your twentieth summer, as well as the one who pulled Sadu away from the others upon her sixteenth nameday, sensing the blessing of Nhaama within her. They had spent more time together in her tutelage, you think, than she ever did with her own parents. 

“Did he?” you murmur, looking down at your hands. You are grateful for all the guidance he gave you and Sadu. You never liked him much— he always looked at you with such wary eyes, as if you were a stranger in their midst. 

(Perhaps he was right, in the end.)

“He would always say you were burdened with the soul of a wanderer. That you yearned for the horizon, even in your past life.” Sadu remains expressionless, gaze turned upwards. “That one day, these lands would no longer sate your hunger for life.” 

You look down, and see her fist trembling, clenched against her leg. 

“Is that why you told me to leave?”

It hurts, still, to think about that night— sharp words, raised voices, your lungs scraping against the broken pieces of your heart as you started your seabound journey.

Sadu closes her eyes, her body still as a statue. 

“I did not want to be left.”

The unspoken rings clear in the cavern— she sought to escape the despair of being left by casting you out first. A crude solution, and one that she bears with grit teeth and tense shoulders. 

And perhaps it’s cruel of you, to take comfort in this— in knowing it pains her just as much to remember. You had always been so selfish, after all, wanting to share everything with her. 

(Everything. You turn Azem’s crystal in your hands again.)

“Come with me.”

Sadu finally looks at you— if only in surprise and annoyance. “What?”

“Next time. When you aren’t Khatun. Come see the world with me.” 

She stares for a moment, and you watch the understanding settle in her eyes— she scowls, clicking her tongue again as she looks away.

“Must you be such a fool? I’ve no interest in the lands outside Nhaama’s grasp. My soul burns brightest here.” She shakes her head, and you smile down at your hands to soften the disappointment. Yes, you know. Sadu has ever been a child of the Steppe. She has no need for the world beyond. 

“I know my place,” she declares with the iron will you’ve always adored so. “Now more than ever.” 

Such certainty. And why not? Sadu’s world is one that is lived, not mastered— the land breathes, and she breathes with it. The days pass like the beats of a heart, each lived with the vibrance and vigor of her _choosing—_ and the heart does not yearn to wander beyond the span of the life it beats for. 

“Next time,” Sadu murmurs, rising to her feet, “I shall remember.”

You crane your neck to look up at her, leaning back on your palms. “Remember what?”

She crosses her arms, and at this angle you can’t see her eyes past her horns— though, perhaps, they aren’t as readable as you found them years ago, anyhow. 

“That a wanderer need not be an exile,” she says, “and to wait for a traveler is not such a terrible fate.” 

It takes you a moment— for someone so straightforward, so strong-willed, Sadu speaks in such eloquent circles around the softer corners of her heart. 

_I’ll not stop you, next time,_ she means to tell you. _Promise to come home to me._

(They say Azim and Nhaama yearned for each other for eternity, never able to share the same sky save for the rare confluence of stars. What a tragedy, the stories tell, that two beings so perfectly matched for one another were destined to live apart.)

“In any case,” she scoffs, turning on her heel. “Do not tarry overlong. Cirina will be worried for you.” 

You watch her walk off with steel in her steps, tempering the ardor rising in your chest— she has such little patience for sentimentality, and perhaps you’ve both had enough for today.

“Sadu?”

She stops at the mouth of the cavern. “What is it?”

You smile. “After dinner, will you tell me how it’s going with Cirina?”

A pebble comes flying and hits your square on the temple— you fall, laughing as you try to rub the sting off your skin. She gives you no other response other than angry muttering under her breath as she stomps off— it’s just as well.

The Allagan shard of Nhaama pulses violet in the cavern, and the mysteries lie tangled and unsolved at your feet. You dust them off your knees as you rise to your feet and make your way back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and yes, Sadu and Cirina are dating here.


End file.
